


Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

by be_a_rebel



Series: Brothers!AU [6]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-22
Updated: 2011-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:16:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_a_rebel/pseuds/be_a_rebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter loves Neal but he doesn’t trust him and that’s always been the crux of their problems, the reason they can’t get together and Neal can’t fuck El in Peter’s bed while Peter watches because Peter’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Peter is furious with him, once again, because Peter thinks he did something he didn’t.

Peter loves Neal but he doesn’t trust him and that’s always been the crux of their problems, the reason they can’t get together and Neal can’t fuck El in Peter’s bed while Peter watches because Peter’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And ain’t that a kick in the head.

* * *

June is the wife of a conman and the smartest woman he knows. Even smarter than El.

She’s Neal’s retreat for when things go bad with Peter.

She was his reprieve when Neal forged an ID at sixteen and got thoroughly wasted at Jenny Field’s birthday. She was his reprieve when Neal got into a car accident and didn’t call anyone and Peter didn’t speak to him for a month.

She was his reprieve when Peter and El got engaged.

She thinks he’s in love with El. It’s not a lie.

But it’s only half the story.

El calls him every night and on the third night June bluntly asks him if he’s having an affair with his brother’s wife.

She sees the truth in his eyes.

She doesn’t admonish or lecture.

The sadness in her eyes is enough.

* * *

He goes to Peter’s house on a Saturday afternoon when he knows Peter is at a lunch.

He knows this because he sent Peter there.

He kisses El in her garden and fucks her in the same lilies he helped her plant last year.

They don’t take their clothes off. El’s dress is around her chest and Neal’s pants are lowered to his thighs. He bites her mouth like he’s angry but he knows that she knows that it’s just bitterness, all the validity she can have with Peter, all the joy he gives her wound up in his mouth, almond-bitter.

His love is a tad unfair. He’s known that for a while.

He zips up and stands up and holds out his hand for her. She stares at him and takes a moment to shake her head and it’s then, and only then that he notices that her eyes are wet.

It takes him twenty minutes to drive home and two minutes to empty the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl.

* * *

He can’t speak to Peter. He knows that. Conversations with Peter regarding emotion always end in fights or, more recently, in sex.

He doesn’t have the ease El has. He knows why, to some extent. He knows Peter can’t be easy with him, he knows that with him and Peter it’s either love or hate and none of the indifference, casualness of the in-between.

So, instead, he does what he used to do when he was younger.

He writes Peter a letter.

It’s the scariest thing he’s ever done. It’s the bravest thing he’s ever done.

It’s also the dumbest.

He locks his doors and windows and stocks up on wine and watches Casablanca over and over again, trying to understand why “here’s looking at you kid” always makes El cry.

He’s never understood why she gets on the plane. He would never have.

He would have stayed forever, letting things fall apart around them.

That’s what love is, in the end. Pure, unadulterated selfishness.

Eventually, he gets over himself and goes to work, flirts shamelessly with his newest assistant and tries not to think about Peter in the next room. He tries not to wonder if Peter’s read the letter yet.

* * *

At nine that night, he gets a text from El which simply says ‘thank you’.

He sits on a stool, trying to decipher the text when someone starts banging on his door.

It’s Peter, obviously, of course but there’s no talking, that’s El’s purview and when Peter kisses him, it’s finally, finally gentle and Neal manages to stand because the wall’s holding him up.

It turns hard fast because it is them in the end and Peter is swearing at him even as he pushes him down on to the rug in the foyer. Neal makes a joke about the neighbours but it’s caught up in Peter’s mouth and there’s never been this, not before, there hasn’t been joy.

Peter is smiling against his mouth even as he traces Neal’s thighs with harsh, searching fingers and all Neal can think is, I’m finally home.


End file.
